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Soviet Union [USSR] Heat and Cogeneration
Although electrical energy is vital to Soviet industry, it is
only about one-sixth the total energy generated in the country.
Heat, which is also indispensable to industry, cannot be
transported over long distances. Most heat came from central heat
and power stations in urban and industrial centers, which burned
coal, heavy oil, or natural gas to generate heat as well as
electricity. In the 1980s, a major program developed large-scale
generators to produce heat as a by-product in existing thermal and
nuclear power plants. Steam from the latter can be sent as far as
forty kilometers. This process, called cogeneration, centralizes
the fragmented heat-generation system. In 1985 urban cogeneration
plants provided 28 percent of total Soviet power.
Data as of May 1989
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